Elanview Cicada isn’t a drone with a camera, but a camera that flies!

If you thought the Lily Camera had no competition, think again. The Elanview Cicada is another camera-focused consumer quadcopter drone. The design of the Cicada is such that it’ll give you clear hints about what it is — a flying camera, and not a quadcopter which happens to have a camera.

Elanview appears to be a startup, one which is probably based in… China. The official website doesn’t tell much apart from the specifications of the Cicada and the myriad of colors it will ship in. Digging around however lead me to a video of the Cicada which can be found at the end of the article.

The Elanview Cicada is listed with a 16 mega-pixel camera with 1080p/30fps capabilities, with a 10-burst mode. My guess is that this mode allows you to take 10 pictures real fast, something also known as ‘burst mode’ on smartphones. FPV is also what the Cicada is supposed to do, with a 800 x 480 pixel stream relayed to your smartphone.

According to the company, the flying camera can do 15 minutes of flight on one charge of the 7.4V 1000mAh battery which it includes as stock. Pretty impressive, but wise minds would wait for some real-world tests to be performed.

The Elanview Cicada isn’t a quadcopter with a camera, it’s a flying camera

And then of course there’s one key return (thankfully GPS-assisted). Surprisingly, Elanview make no mention of headless mode for the Cicada. I’ll try and get in touch with either the manufacturers or any of the resellers to know when the Cicada will begin shipping. Speaking of resellers, the Cicada is on pre-order for $399 — time will tell if that’s a price worth paying for it or not. Meanwhile, enjoy the flying camera in action!